Staying Excited

Whenever I wonder if this project is the right thing to do with my summer – rather than auditioning, rather than writing features, rather than reading books under a tree in Connecticut – I think back to “The Queen Bee of Mushroomtown,” and what an absolute blast it was to do. I think about how good it felt to be part of a team, to be focused on a common goal, to have a clear, unalterable deadline and a shared determination to meet it, one way or another. I took that deadline so seriously, even my body fell in line; whereas ordinarily it would have been clamoring for things like sleep and meals, it quietly knuckled under, settling for a well-timed shower and the occasional Nutri-Grain bar. I can think of very few times in my life when I’ve felt so focused and productive – or, for that matter (and at the risk of sounding trite) so alive.

And it’s not just that the process was exciting; the product was something fundamentally different than what we would have come up with on a more leisurely time-frame. The film has an up-for-grabs, freewheeling quality that we could never have contrived or planned for. And although I got full writing credit (Mike’s idea, I swear), the final version of the script owes a lot to eleventh-hour inspiration on the part of the actors, especially James Fauvell, who contributed his character’s last line, which became the title, which became the galvanizing title song by Bruffee & Bruffee. It all came together with an almost eerie serendipity.

And yeah, “Twelve in Twelve” will be plenty different. It’s twelve times as many films, in eighty-four times as much time. It’s more of a marathon than a sprint, more of a challenge than a contest. But it’s in the same spirit as the Film Race – namely, the spirit of “Hey, why not?” – and if it captures just a fraction of that mad, uncompromising energy, it’ll be well worth giving a few months of our lives to.

Posted by Keith